It seems God has it in for the cathedral city.
I just finished watching scenes of rescues from an office block that has four floors but no supporting walls - layer cake - a woman who stepped out for lunch just before the quake tells the camera that there were about 200 people in there ... I though "meat sandwich" and decided to get the digest version on the main news tonight. I am just in the wrong space for this.
The coverage was interesting on technical merit - mostly because we got to see people fronting the news who would not normally be there. They actually did a good job considering the strain ... you could tell what it was doing to the reporters when the impromptu anchor on TV3 reported "fatalities" as "injuries" three times before it sank in ... and she was replaced right after. The woman on the spot (Rebecca Wright?) was holding up very well though the strain showed in her voice.
This is a real disaster Brucie - none of this Cyclone stuff we get out of Ozzie.
I wonder if Christchurch Cathedral is insured against acts of God?
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ReplyDelete"I wonder if Christchurch Cathedral is insured against acts of God?".
ReplyDeleteThat got me laughing - what a classic! I must re-use that.
What exactly does it take for people to realise that either:-
1. God doesn't intervene (surely at least this much is obvious).
2. God caused it.
3. God doesn't exist.
If he caused it then whoa watch out, you could be next! This God is on record as being jealous (his own words) and capricious.
If he didn't intervene, but didn't actually cause it, then this must be either by choice or lack of power. Perhaps he's just asleep at the wheel, or maybe the universe is an experiment whereby intervention would taint the result. Who knows.
Come to think of it, you can't even really say God didn't cause it, in a universe where God is said to be the "first cause". He must therefore ultimately be the cause of everything. This would seem to be confirmed by the biblical passage Isaiah 45:7 "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things" (KJV). So what, again, is the purpose of praying?
Onto the third point, which appears to be the simplest explanation, so according to Occam, must be right.
So much more could be said.
Hmmm ... I'll have to remember Isiah 45:7, it explicitly states that God created evil (though, in context, as a consequence of creating peace - like darkness is an absence of light).
ReplyDeletenote: Occam's razor is that one is best advised to accept the proposition with the least amount of extraneous bullshit. "God did it" is the simplest explanation ... but requires us to accept lots of other stuff like answering prayers, being on our side in wars, and disapproving of our sex lives. (thanks to Richard Dawkins.)
Lots more has been said - this stuff never ends.